SPRINGFIELD, MO – Nearly 800 rural electric cooperative members from Missouri, Iowa and Oklahoma attended the 46th annual meeting of Springfield, Mo.-based Associated Electric Cooperative (AECI) in St. Louis June 2-4. Members learned how climate change legislation being debated in Congress could raise their electric rates more than 260 percent if new power generation is not developed.

Duane Highley, director of power production at AECI, examined the Lieberman-Warner America’s Climate Security Act proposal, which would impose a cap-and-trade process to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 70 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.

Highley pointed out the Lieberman-Warner proposal would require drastic greenhouse gas reductions: 80 percent to 90 percent per capita by 2050. In a worst-case scenario, that would mean Americans would have to reduce their electricity consumption to 10 percent of the electricity they use today. American households also could spend an estimated $4,000 to $7,000 more annually to pay for the environmental controls needed to reduce and capture greenhouse gases, he said.

People living in the Midwest would be particularly hard hit by such proposals, Highley said, because Midwest weather requires heating and cooling, and the region relies on coal generation, which is also the reason for its lower rates.

"It’s not easy to be green,” Highley stated. He touted AECI’s aggressive and proactive actions to address such challenges, including its Take Control & Save energy efficiency program for member-owners (www.TakeControlAndSave.coop); its experiments with biomass, carbon sequestration and algae capture of carbon dioxide; its participation in the Chicago Climate Exchange; and its teamwork with such research facilitators as the Electrical Power Research Institute.

The focus on climate change and its effects comes at a time when members are using more electricity. In 2007, AECI saw a 5.2 percent increase in member energy sales over 2006 and set an all-time peak demand record for the third consecutive year. AECI achieved this while also working to reduce the cooperative’s systemwide nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions rate by 90 percent by Jan. 1, 2009, with the addition of a $385 million environmental controls project at its Thomas Hill Energy Center.

AECI Board President O.B. Clark said the cost of climate change remedies will severely affect many of AECI’s member-owners. Ninety percent of the customers that receive power generated by AECI are residential households. Of those households, about 350,000 have incomes of less than $40,000, and 130,000 of those have incomes of less than $20,000.

"In these uncertain times, our mission has not changed,” said Clark. “We must continue to provide reliable, affordable power to these members while meeting our environmental responsibilities.” He urged cooperative members to contact their elected representatives and let them know co-op members need fair, balanced rules. Congress also must give some certainty to energy providers, he said, so they can develop solutions for reducing greenhouse gases while meeting the nation’s growing energy demands.

Glenn English, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, encouraged members to participate in the national grassroots campaign (www.ourenergy.coop) and let their representatives in Congress know that any climate change legislation must balance an increasing demand for reliable, low-cost electricity among rural cooperative members with the responsibility to protect the environment.

Another speaker, John Hutchinson, senior account executive at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), spoke about technologies that promise to reduce CO2 emissions. These include expanded use of renewable energy sources, a new generation of nuclear power plants, plug-in hybrids, carbon capture and sequestration research and improvements to coal plant efficiency.

Dr. Richard Sandor, chair and CEO of the Chicago Climate Exchange, the world’s first and North America’s only multinational and multisector marketplace for reducing and trading greenhouse gas emissions, applauded AECI for being the first and only Missouri utility to join the Exchange. He said one-sixth of the U.S. economy already participates in $240 billion of cap-and-trade carbon trading annually. Attractive pricing is signaling investors, innovators and inventors that cap and trade is a proven, market-based alternative to proposed carbon tax legislation.

Associated Electric Cooperative Inc. is owned by and provides wholesale power to six regional and 51 local electric cooperative systems in Missouri, southeast Iowa and northeast Oklahoma that serve more than 850,000 customers. AECI’s mission is to provide an economical and reliable power supply and support services to its members, including the new “Take Control & Save” energy efficiency program, www.TakeControlAndSave.coop. AECI is a Touchstone Energy Cooperative.